Our literacy centers are up and running! The students have been building so much stamina over the past few weeks, that they were finally ready to put it all together. There are five literacy activities. They are read to self, read to someone, work on writing, word work, and listen to reading. They will be choosing these activities to work on during the week everyday while I work with small groups of students. They did an amazing job last week and I'm excited for them to make their choices this week and watch them hard at work. There are pictures of the students doing all of these activities in the September album. We also finished Chapter 2 this week in math, which focused on number bonds. We will be starting Chapter 3 this week, which is taking what they know about numbers and addition and putting them into number sentences or number models. This week, we used the iPads to practice listening to reading. I introduced them to an app called Storia. Storia allows you to read and listen to stories purchased through the Scholastic Book Order. Right now I have about 24 books in my account, and I hope to keep accumulating more with the points I got from our book order. I highly recommend looking into getting this app if you have an iPad, Kindle, or other reading device on the Scholastic website and let me know if you are interested in ordering some digital books for your child. I have also noticed that many of your children have been working on IXL! I was really happy to see that you are taking advantage of the program at home already. We are working on getting a list together of specific skills that match the chapters we are working on, so we appreciate your patience.
I also wanted to let you know that this is my last week at school until after winter break. The baby is due September 29, so I will hopefully make it through the week. Ms. Spurrier has been in and out of the room the past few days and will be with us full time starting tomorrow. As sad as I am to leave these kids for a while, I know they are in good hands and I have had a lot of time to set them up with wonderful routines and get their beginning of the year assessments completed. They will be starting some new, differentiated groupings for Team Literacy and word study in the next couple weeks, and I know they will be in groups for them that are just right. The three months will go fast and I will be back before they know it, but I will miss them very much. I can be in contact through email while I am gone, so don't hesitate if you need something.
Things to ask your child about:
-How do you pick your literacy choices at school?
-What are some of the word study activities you've learned?
-Can you show me an example of a number bond?
Reminders:
-We are going to Rivershire on Tuesday afternoon. If you are volunteering, you meet us at Rivershire, not at school. You will arrive at 1:00 and we leave to get there around 1:30.
-If you are interested in volunteering for math once a week, please let me know! We have math from 9:20-10:20 Tuesday through Friday and are looking for parent volunteers that want to help in the classroom.
-If you have not had a chance to sign up to be a mystery reader and are interested, let me know. Thanks to the people who have already come in to visit!
-Remember that library books are due on Fridays. I have also been lending students books from our classroom library